Turn your products ON: Blippar at Vivid Ideas and Remix Sydney

At Blippar we know that turning products, print and other marketing collateral into rich, interactive digital portals makes consumer engagement skyrocket. Through the use of image-recognition and augmented reality (AR) technologies, products become exciting, innovative media channels that invite active customer engagement.

We’ve seen it on campaigns we’ve executed for clients including Nestle, Heinz, Pepsi, and Maybelline; our most successful projects have achieved over millions interactions, and dwell times far exceeding those achieved by any other digital medium.

So we thought it was time to share this exciting news with some people on the other side of the world.

Our CEO and co-founder Ambarish Mitra travelled to Australia with our Antipodean strategic account director Kate Russell to attend Sydney’s Vivid Ideas festival of ‘light, music and ideas’ and Remix Sydney, which explores ‘the intersection between culture, technology and entrepreneurship’. The pair appeared on a number of panels explaining how the mobile phone has changed the way we interact with world, and how Blippar’s new visual discovery app will help it continue to do so.

Rish Mitra speaking on the panel at Remix Sydney

Mitra enlightened spectators on how Blippar already helps brands connect deeply with their fans, and how the new version of our app will soon be able to unlock contextual, real-time mobile content from every single object and image in the world - whether branded or not - from bottles and cars to trees and cats.

At Remix he spoke about how the rapid rise of mobile technology and 24/7 connectivity is changing the way people connect with brands and institutions; he was joined by Buzzfeed Australia Editor Simon Crerar, National Creative Director of the Digital Arts Network Russ Tucker, and Marc Fennell, presenter of ABC’s Download This Show, in a session broadcast on ABC national radio.

Kate Russell speaking at Vivid Sydney

Speaking at Vivid Sydney, Russell said: ‘Visual search and interactive print gives us an opportunity to bring together compelling stories, digital content and mobile engagement,’ said Russell. ‘Augmented reality has a great wow effect; its ability to pop out and grab attention, tell a story and give us fun experiences is amazing. It’s really shaping the way we connect with the world. It enables brands to connect people with content and enables them to really deepen the conversation. It’s about expanding your existing user base and if you have a marketing issue, you can use interactivity to solve it in new and exciting ways.’

She went on to explain that that Maybelline’s virtual nail polish testing campaign both drove customer social engagement and helped the brand identify popular colours that needed the most stock.

Mitra elaborated on the importance of the camera function in terms of mobile marketing, saying: ‘We are by nature very visual creatures. We learn, discover and create all the forms of cognition and learning through our eyes. Just like our eyes, the camera has become the primary sensor of the phone. Think about your interactions on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter: all these applications are so image-driven. An image is worth a thousand words and nothing will change that.’

Read more:

Blippar: Augmented reality is bringing customer engagement to life CMO